Perry Farrell Regrets ‘Tragic Relationship’ With David Bowie

Perry Farrell said he regretted the “tragic relationship” he had with David Bowie, which included incidents where he accidentally handed out his hero’s phone number and email address.

The Jane’s Addiction singer added that he’d hoped to make amends but didn’t manage to reconnect with Bowie before his death – though he remained convinced they would meet again.

“I kept screwing up as a young man,” Farrell revealed to NME in a recent interview. “I would do stupid things, like one time I left my cellphone in a cab. The cab driver got a hold of it and started texting him, ‘Yo, David, what’s up?’ in my name. Then [Bowie] would be like, ‘Perry, what are you doing?’ This guy was constantly texting him and trying to get hold of him.”

Farrell added that Bowie wasn’t mad, “but he was annoyed by me.” “Then another time, somebody had approached me to do a bit of charity work," he added. "So I thought, ‘I do want to help this person, and I’m going to get David Bowie to help me too!’ I forwarded the [email] to David and it had maybe a chain of 200 people. … I didn’t understand about blind CCing in those days, so I effectively gave, like, 200 people access to David’s private email. Again he texted back, saying, ‘Perry, what are you doing?’”

When Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti invited Farrell to take part in a musical event, he thought, “This is it, I’m gonna make up with David and he’s gonna know me to be a sophisticated young man.” Even though Bowie died in 2016 before the event took place, meaning the making-up moment never took place, Farrell said, “I never use the term ‘dead’, because I do know that the afterlife people are very much conscious – so maybe I’ll have the chance to catch up with him some day and thank him for being such an amazing artist that I really studied and aspired to be.”